Kitchen Island Construction

The Peninsula Was the Island of Its Day

Walk into a kitchen in Somerset or Bridle Trails that has not been touched since the house was built and there is a good chance you will find a peninsula: a run of base cabinets jutting off one wall, often with a raised bar ledge, sometimes with a cooktop set into it. It did the job an island does now. It also tends to cut the room in half and send everyone the long way around to reach the refrigerator.

Replacing that peninsula with a freestanding island is one of the most common requests we get in these homes, and one of the easiest to get wrong when the island is sized by eye.

Sizing an Island to the Room

The island has to leave room to move. We plan for at least 42 inches of clear aisle on working sides and 48 inches where two people cook or where a dishwasher door or oven door drops open into the path. Measure from the counter edge, not from the cabinet face, because the overhang eats into the aisle.

A larger kitchen invites a larger island, but bigger is not always better. Past a certain depth you cannot reach the middle of the top to wipe it down, and a slab large enough to cover it without a seam may not exist in the material you want, or may cost a good deal more to fabricate and carry into the house. A seam in an island is normal. We just want you to decide where it goes.

Seating

Counter height seating wants roughly 24 inches of width per stool and an overhang deep enough for knees, usually 12 to 15 inches. A deeper overhang in stone needs support, either steel brackets hidden under the top or legs and end panels. We settle that with the fabricator before the top is templated, because it cannot be added neatly afterwards.

What Goes in the Island

Nothing but storage

The simplest choice and often the best one. Deep drawers for pots on the cooking side, a clear top for prep and serving, and no plumbing or venting to route.

A sink

Moving a sink into the island means running supply and drain lines under the floor. In a house with an unfinished basement or a crawl area below, that is manageable. Over a finished ceiling it gets more involved. An island sink also needs a vent arrangement the inspector will accept, and the drain has to slope correctly back to the stack. We check the route before recommending the move, because this is where island budgets tend to grow.

A cooktop

Possible, but the ventilation is harder. A ceiling hood over an island needs a larger capture area than a wall hood because air reaches it from every side, and its duct has to find a path through the framing above to an outside wall or the roof. Downdraft units solve the look and rarely solve the steam. In a Bellevue house with its windows shut for months at a time, we usually suggest keeping the cooktop on a wall.

Power

Islands need receptacles, and the rules for where they go have changed in recent electrical code editions. We place outlets and any circuits for a microwave drawer or warming drawer at rough in, before the floor and top are finished, and they are inspected with the rest of the kitchen wiring.

How We Build It

The floor comes first. Many of these homes have hardwood or tile that stops at the base of the peninsula, so removing it leaves a gap in the flooring. We either patch in matching material, lay new flooring through the whole area, or build the island over a clean subfloor, and we agree which before demolition, since a patch in forty year old oak can be hard to hide.

Then the base. Cabinets are fastened to cleats anchored to the subfloor so the island cannot shift, end panels and any legs are fitted, and blocking goes in for the countertop overhang. Plumbing and electrical rough ins are inspected. The top is templated only once everything is fixed and level, then fabricated and set.

When to Keep the Peninsula

Some kitchens are too narrow for an island with proper aisles. Squeezing one in leaves 36 inch aisles and a room that feels tighter than it did before. If yours is one of them, a reworked peninsula in a better position, with a real seating overhang, may be the right answer. We will draw both options so you can compare them side by side.

Call (425) 916-4989 to talk through an island for your kitchen.